InSideOut Best Practices: Tippecanoe School Corporation in Indiana

InSideOut Initiative  |  Indiana

It’s always great to hear directly from leaders implementing InSideOut strategies in their programs and how becoming an InSideOut School has positively impacted their school communities.

To celebrate the work being done by InSideOut partners, we’ll be highlighting their values-based leadership and culture-changing efforts here on the blog. Today, we’re featuring two Indiana partners in the Tippecanoe School Corporation—Jerry Galema, Assistant Principal/Director of Athletics at Harrison High School and Ryan Walden, Assistant Principal/Director of Athletics at McCutcheon High School—about presenting their InSideOut work to their school board.

Jerry and Ryan on Presenting to the School Board

Recently, we had the opportunity to share our involvement with the InSideOut Initiative with the Tippecanoe School Corporation Board of Trustees. We are grateful to serve a community and work with a board that understands the importance of providing education-based athletics. We felt confident going into the meeting that our board would support our involvement and share our enthusiasm for cultivating purpose-driven leaders focused on building positive relationships.

Our game plan was simple. We created a slide deck that covered the following topics:

  • Win-at-all-cost society

  • How athletics can support our board’s mission

  • InSideOut Initiative common language

  • How to develop a Transformational Purpose Statement

  • Definition of success

  • The process within our schools

  • Our vision/goals moving forward

The meeting was extremely successful—conversations were abundant and very positive. Early in the presentation, the board asked some very insightful and important questions such as:

  • How do you share this work with the community?

  • Can you lead a transactional coach down the path to become a transformational coach?

  • How do you reach our entire community (middle schools, youth programs, etc.)?

  • How do you evaluate coaches and hold them accountable to InSideOut principles?

Every answer could be found by discussing the InSideOut pathway including the transformational/transactional continuum, definition of success, common language, exit interviews, job descriptions, evaluation tools, interview questions, or simply by relying on what we have learned from Joe, Jody, and the InSideOut team.

Less than 24 hours later we have received positive emails from members of our central office and our board. Our superintendent quickly followed up with us asking how he can help with this process. Together, we plan to ask our board to adopt a position statement referencing their support of the principles of the InSideOut within our schools.

Here’s an excerpt we received the next morning from one of our Board of Trustees:

“I love that your efforts will focus on purpose as a greater good than goals, and focus on that co-curricular aspect of the athletic experience. Those are great messages, and those outcomes will help develop great citizens for our future. Thank you so much for pouring your effort into this meaningful approach. And thank you for taking an evening of your time to share it with us.”

I made mention during our meeting that we are committed to the values and beliefs associated with the InSideOut Initiative. We are in a very good place—working one day at a time—taking one step at a time–to align our community around the values and beliefs that will transform sports culture in our community.

Share With Us

We’re fortunate to work with more than 2,700 schools and nearly 1,500 ADs across 12 states—and we often hear inspirational stories about life-sustaining athletics experiences, and communities putting student-athletes’ health and well-being at the center of their programs.

If you are doing transformational work in education-based athletics, we want to hear from you!

Share your story and a photo at info@insideoutinitiative.org for a chance to be featured.